Tuesday, November 13, 2012

We Shouldn't Be Eating Twinkies, Anyway

Over at Hot Air, a raging conservative web site, they're incredulous that workers at the Hostess bakeries could be striking. The shock! I mean, the proletariat always wants to rise up against the capitalists and assert their dignity! Raises, rights, respect, and all that. These conservatives don't care about the little people, they only care about rich people who eat fondue and caviar and who laugh at the travails of the commoner. Take the first comment on that post, for example:

I wish someone would explain to me the logic in picketing a company in
bankruptcy. Seems to me driving them out of business will be a whole lot
worse for those employees than any wage or benefit cut.

It's not about the wages, Mr. Capitalist Pig-dog. It's about raises, rights, and respect! If the company goes bankrupt, well, those fatcat owners will just have to suffer by not making any more money. The workers can always go on unemployment for 99 weeks, and then "stress/depression" disability forever after that. They'll be fine--and they'll have stuck it the company good!

With socialized medicine the law of the land right now, we shouldn't be eating Twinkies and Ho-Hos anyway. They just make us fat, cause diabetes, and will cause health care costs to rise. Everyone should be eating broccoli anyway. That is the new definition of patriotic.

22 comments:

Actually, this shows a reasoned view of unions, as neither your new or old self ever appears, or appeared to have. The purpose of unions is to equalize bargaining power, not dominate it. If either side dominates, both lose. In the NHL, for example, players are being entirely unreasonable, and wearing down; in the raley's strike, workers are trying to maintain long term benefits already promised. i don't know the particulars of this strike, but the fact that a leftist would side against the union is a sign of intellectual honesty. I keep suggesting you read an economic analysis of monopsony, and the worth of unions, and you keep not doing it. or, doing it and refuting it.

You misunderstand. I'm not against the strike here--I'm for the workers! If the strike destroys the company, the workers don't suffer, only the rich capitalist pig-dog stockholders do! No matter how the strike turns out, it's clearly a win for the employees.

ugh. this is exhausting. either way you came back, you were going to miss my point . . . because you don't understand the rationale for unions. the point is . . .they have an atagonistic relationship that betters both their lots. unions can strike, if they think they are being taken advantage of (raley's) and management can lock out workers if they think they are. the ones who are correct, win in the end -- because if they don't, everyone loses. my point was, someone supporting management who normally would be expected to support labor, is someone who is willing to consider issues and make a logical choice. your 'prior' ego's stance would have decried the workers, automatically; your current one mocks the willingness to reason. i'm not sure which is worse. neither shows any economic understanding. you've done much better, darren.

and, in fairness . . . i have changed my way of thinking about PUBLIC employee unions . . .you can't apply the model if the firm in question (government) has no interest in efficiency (they don't) and administration is supported by labor (they are) and idiot voters continue to re-elect the same administrators. if step 4 weren't true, we'd be okay; if step 3 weren't, it would be better. 1 and 2 aren't possible.

The reason teacher's unions go to bat for drunk, lazy or criminal teachers, and every other union does exactly the same thing, isn't to "equalize bargaining power" but to demonstrate to the members that membership has its benefits.

Great if you're a member. Not so great if you're a parent or a car-buyer but then who gives a damn what the customer thinks? The unofficial union motto is "screw you, I've got mine" so if you're a parent and your kid's in the grip of a lazy, incompetent or criminal teacher you'd be a fool to expect the union to lift a finger to remedy the situation. From the union's point of view there's nothing to remedy.

I do, however, admire the cleverness of this exciting, new attempt at some justification for unions, monoposny. Arcane and sounding very intellectual, if "monoposny" gains much currency among union supporters it might buy union supporters a bit of time delaying the demise of unions. That would be a tragedy because unions are economically parasitic, bringing nothing of value to the exchange between employer and employee, and thus result in a slowing of economic growth.

I didn't claim you were stupid. I did claim that you weren't well versed in the theory of labor with regard to monopsony powers, and the fact that unions provide the best, albeit imperfect solution to the market failure. That's not stupid, that's just being unwilling to give the monopsony wikipedia page (which has a very well mathematically developed proof, both geometrically and with calculus) a look before poking holes in my argument. That's different. You um, used to, complain that people on the left want to base their solutions on feelings, and not facts and the real world. . .I agree with you about that; but in this case you're doing the same thing.Allen, I assume you posted before my follow up post went up, because you have a point: public employee unions are different animals, because they can fund and vote for the people who will later give them money. As to protecting the worker, you can certainly argue that it's too hard to fire a teacher, but the other side of that coin is that if those protections weren't in place, it would be ridiculously easy to fire good teachers whose demanding standards caused students not to get grades as high as in other classes. Since the vast majority of teachers are good, I'd rather give them the protection.

Maxutils, I don't care whether they're government unions or private sector unions, unions are always bad for society at large. They're economically parasitic and political dangerous. It's only by successfully constraining the discussion to what advantages he employee that unions make any sense at all.

You see, I don't give a damn about the employee. What I care about is the something of value that those employees produce.

Teachers ostensibly teach and UAW members produce cars. What I want is educated kids and cars that are properly put together. How either is achieved isn't important to me so neither are the people who do the job. Quite the opposite.

If robots put cars together and Sal Kahn educates kids then the need to pay people to do either goes away. Cars get cheaper, probably better, and taxes drop. What is it about that state of affairs that I shouldn't like? I understand what it is about that state of affairs that the people currently doing the work don't like but union members aren't the only people with concerns so why is it that their point of view is the only one worthy of discussion?

Because, like I wrote at the beginning of this post, if anyone else's concerns are represented in the conversation the carefully-crafted rhetorical house of cards of rationalizations which support unions falls apart. Unions are revealed as the embodiment of thuggery they are since they produce nothing of value and depend on coercion to force their way into the free market relationship between employer and employee.

allen, i normally agree with you. but, on this issue, you are absolutely wrong. you are actually worse off with a small number of manufacturers producing as they wish, with unions being eliminated. the math is indisputable, but, apparently, both you and darren can't find the wikipedia page. i mean . . . i agree with your BELIEFS . . . if chinese prisoners can produce it cheaper than teamsters, why not (except for that hole in your soul) but that's not the whole story. overall, the populous is worse off without unions. do the math, then come at me. either or both of you . . .until then, you're just as sadly wrong as the people i try to encourage not to vote for stupid ballot initiatives.

Sorry max, I'm not wrong. Unions are parasites and you can see that if you look at unions from any perspective other then that of a member.

I'll take care of my soul but the populous isn't better off with unions a significant element in the economy. We're worse off, unless you happen to be a union member. Hence the "screw you, I've got mine" mentality of unions.

The math really is very simple and it's based on the fact that the whole purpose of a union is to get you more they you're worth. That means whoever buys the product of the company that employs those union members is a bit poorer then they ought to be. The union member's better off and everyone else is worse off.

Having been a member of two unions, and a shop steward in one of them, I have enough personal experience with unions to speak with some authority and that background informs me that while unions are certainly worth it as far as the membership is concerned they're otherwise worthless and worse then worthless as far as society at large is concerned.

If you're a union member, and it sounds as if you are, you might want to come to terms with the fact that your good fortune comes at the cost of other people's poor fortune. You're better off because someone(s) else are worse off.

allen,just as you get silence if you don't constrain the discussion of monopoly to the benefit of the manufaturer. Monopolists always charge a price higher than a free market with competition would; a business without a union will always pay a lower wage than would be negotiated in a collective market (mitigated to the extent that there may be other firms in the area competing for the same laborers). These are indisputable economic truisms . .. if you're okay with monopolists exploiting consumers to make above normal profit, or for them to artificially reduse costs by exploiting workers, so be it - but that then needs to be part of your argument.

Max, before you *again* play your one-note-song that Allen and I are just too dumb to understand the importance of unions, perhaps you should read this. The title is sufficient if you just can't find time in your busy schedule to fit the whole article in.

first, at no point have i suggested either of you were 'dumb'. I have suggested that you are unwilling to explore economic theory that is entirely mathematically and logically defensible. I don't see how the link to the Hostess case at all invalidates my point: the theory of union/management negotiations suggests that it puts labor on equal footing, and that both have a common goal - to produce as much stuff as possible, and to maximize welfare for both parties. If a union asks for a compensation package above what the firm can truly afford, the union risks costing itself jobs, and the firm production. likewise, if management offers to low a wage for what they can truly afford, the workers can elect not to work, costing themselves jobs and the firm production. Neither has an incentive to offer something too far away from equilibrium. In this case, the workers apparently asked for too much, refused to negotiate, and the process failed. But: Hostess already has a new buyer, and most will probably be hired back at lower wages. Not the way it ideally works, but it disproves nothing. In the Raley's case, the opposite happened: management came to the realization that they had gained enough, and kept health care as it was. The negotiations by unions and management for a wage are no different than the negotiations of buyers and sellers to reach an equilibrium price for a good. And, this may be 'one note' . . .but that's because it's sound economic theory, and it's remarkably consistent.

Of course a business will pay a lower wage in the absence of the monopoly supplier of labor, the union. The point of the monopoly, which is what unions are, is to charge a price out of line with value since the customer has no choice in the matter.

And it's not me who's arguing for the beneficial effects of monopolists exploiting consumers but you.

Unions are monopolists which is why "collective bargaining" is enshrined as an indisputable social benefit. To inspect collective bargaining too closely would reveal it to be what it is, coercion mitigated only by the less-then-dependable caution to not kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. Most recent evidence of the less then dependable nature of that caution the original post.

Oh, and as long as we're assigning factors that must be part of my argument I'll take the same liberty in requiring you to find some justification for union violence and criminality. I see it as the final refuge of monopolists when the threat of violence fails but you're free to come up with more defensible justifications.

What you're still failing to understand is that the monopolization of labor, through unions, does nothing more than to equalize bargaining power between labor and management. Otherwise, the relatively few employers in each industry would effectively act as a monopoly on the demand for labor. If there were many more employers in each industry that had to compete for workers, unions would be unnecessary and undesirable -- but in most industries that isn't the case. We weren't discussing violence and criminality, but of course it's wrong -- as is the criminality that runs rampant in corporations.

Oh maxutils, I understand that "equalization" argument and it's nonsense. A job doesn't become more valuable just because the union has a monopoly on labor. It just pays better.

Similarly, your "relatively few employers" argument is nonsense as well. A valuable employee puts money in a bosses pocket and while you might find, locally and temporarily, a collusive arrangement among employers it falls apart as soon as demand for labor outstrips supply.

I appreciate the necessity for finding some ethically valid argument to justify unions but there isn't any. Unions are the embodiment of thuggery and never stray too far from their roots. When you talk about unions you are talking about violence and criminality and the justification that corporations do it too is the argument of the child.

Fortunately, the inevitable avarice that unions engender and encourage has led to their collapse - Hostess being the latest example of how that works - in the private sector and as the 2010 mid-terms demonstrated, the public sector unions are destined for the same fate. Given what I know about unions, from the inside as well as the outside, that's a very gratifying situation.

okay, i'm done. read some economics. i can't believe that you choose to be so willfully ignorant about the issue, but, then again, i see how my state votes, too. you're wrong, and your characterization of my argument as being 'ethical' highlights it: the economics and mathematics of the labor market make unions a net economic gain; the ethics don't matter. the fact that it IS a case of market failure also means that it is unlikely that the ideal wage determination will not be reached. sometimes, unions askfor too much . . .as in the case of hostess, or the airlines, where employees gave back wages to save the business.

Oh, you were done before you started which is why you're taking your refuge in my supposed ignorance. Having dismissed the unsupported assumptions you need to make any sort of case for unions at all you have no fall-back but other, equally unsupported assumptions.

That's why I've gone from not understanding the urgent ethical case for unions, in which they redress a non-existent imbalance of bargaining power between worker and union to being ignorant of economics all without an explanation of either. There's no ethical case for unions and there's no economic case for unions. The ridiculous wage a UAW member gets results in all car buyers being a little poorer then they should be and that ridiculous wage results from the UAW's monopoly on labor, i.e. coercion.

Oh, and there's no such thing as "market failure" any more then there's any such thing as "gravity failure". Well, OK, if you call the consequences of falling off a ladder "gravity failure" that misrepresentation makes some sense. But "market failure", as used by lefties translates into "I'm not getting what I want" and that's no failure of the market but a refusal to come to terms with reality.

A job ought to be worth what someone's freely willing to pay to have it done but government, the necessary embodiment of coercion, allows those who can manipulate the political system to use that coercive power to get what they otherwise have no right too.

market failure is mathematically provable. so, you are wrong, again. you would be right about wages if we had a perfectly competitive labor market . .. but we don't. market failure exists, was acknowledged by adam smith, the free market guy, and your insistence that it doesn't makes you look ignorant.